by Madelyn Alt
“Just a little listening device.”
“And this?” I indicated a smaller black box.
He grabbed my hand and drew me away, carefully avoiding the various tripods and trip wires. “A voice amplifier. Nothing to worry about.”
Noooo, nothing to worry about here. Nothing at all ... “And why are we doing the whole James Bond thing with the neighbors?” I pressed, knowing the story had to be a good one.
“I would never spy on my neighbors without good reason,” he protested as he plopped down onto the sofa and pulled me into his lap. His arms closed immediately around my waist to hold me in place.
Distractions were not going to work on me this time. No sirree ...
“And you explain all of the devices and whatnot pointed at them, how?”
He tilted his head back on the sofa, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling for a moment. “Hm. Would you believe me if I told you that they’re not directed toward the neighbors
specifically?”
I glanced over my shoulder. The cameras certainly seemed to be aimed in all the pertinent directions.
He sighed, his fingers toying with one of my curls. “I take it you’re probably not going to be able to just let this go.”
“Doubtful.”
“I suppose you’re going to need an explanation.”
“Possibly.”
The one-word answers seemed to be working in my favor. “Well,” he said, considering his options, “I suppose I was kidding myself to think that you could come over without wondering what was up.”
“Probably.”
“So I guess you’re wanting answers.”
“Mm-hm.” Was that one word or two? Or none?
“You’re awfully cute when you’re curious,” he said with a wicked grin.
It seems the one-word answers weren’t working so well after all. “Stop trying to confuse me.”
“Maybe I want to confuse you. Maybe”—he twirled the strand of hair around his index finger, then flicked his gaze to mine—“just maybe,” he said, his voice dropping to a low murmur intended to warm a girl’s blood in an instant, “that was my plan all along.”
Before he could lean in to kiss me and scatter my senses to the four winds, I placed my fingertips over his lips. “Neighbors?” I prompted.
“Can’t see a thing, I promise.”
“But you can see them.”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “It’s not for the neighbors, Maggie. I told you that.”
“Then who is it for?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
All of this talking in circles was making my head hurt. I just looked at him, waiting patiently.
Finally he relented. “Take a peek through the view finders.”
I got to my feet and walked over to one of the cameras, bending close to peer through. To my surprise, the object in view wasn’t the house on the opposite side of the street. “It’s pointed at the street itself,” I said, frowning.
“Check another.”
I did. Same story, second time around. The camera that seemed to be pointing at the neighbor’s house next door was actually capturing anyone approaching the house from that direction.
“There’s another camera in the dining room,” Marcus told me.
The question was, why? I turned to him in bemusement.
“I think someone has been watching my place. I just wanted to see if I could catch said someone in the act. Get it on film. Try to figure out what’s up.”
My eyebrows lifted, and I glanced sharply toward the window. “Someone’s been watching you? Why would anyone do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“I don’t know,” he repeated. “A week? Two weeks? I’m not sure. I’ve been a little distracted lately.” He winked at me.
I could relate. Boy, could I ever.
While I was up, I unzipped Minnie’s carrier and set her down on the floor. “There you go, little one.” She stretched and yawned, hooking her claws down to the floor as though searching for carpet to latch onto. I handed her one of her catnip mousies. “Run and play.”
Obediently she picked up the tiny mouse in her mouth and darted for the nearest hidey-hole. She was almost as comfortable at Marcus’s house as she was at the apartment. We’d been over often enough that Marcus had surprised us both by setting up a litter box in the laundry room and a soft kitty bed in the office window that overlooked a group of bird feeders he had installed in the yard, and by installing resident food and water dishes in the kitchen. Already Minnie thought of Marcus’s place as her own.
I turned back to the living room. Still as bemused as ever, I sat down next to Marcus on the sofa. Immediately he drew my legs up over his and placed a steadying hand on my knees to hold me in place.
“Who do you think it is?” I asked him.
“Not a clue,” he said. I didn’t like the way his gaze slid away from mine. Why did I have a feeling that wasn’t entirely the truth?
“Well, have you said anything to anyone?” I persisted. “About all this?”
“Uncle Lou and Aunt Molly know.”
“I don’t mean them. I meant, have you filed a report?”
His eyebrows rose. “With the police? Uh, no.”
“Why not?”
The look he gave me made me realize with a start how pointless the question was, considering my ex-boyfriend Tom’s role with the S.M.P.D.
“Oh. Oh, yeah.” And yet the situation frustrated me. Worst of all, I knew it was entirely my fault. Not intentionally . . . but did that make a difference when someone’s heart was hurting? “There has to be some route available to you. What if this turns out to be serious?”
“Hey . . . Hey.” Turning, he tipped my chin up to look at him, and my heart turned over. “It’s no big deal, Maggie. I’ve got it covered.”
“But—”
He pressed a kiss to my lips to quiet my protests. “No worries, okay?”
It was easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one who was responsible for his inability to go to the police if he needed to. I was.
“So . . . what’s in the bag?” he asked, purposely deflecting my concern toward another topic altogether. I understood immediately what he was doing, but since there was no easy solution to the stalker problem, I quickly decided we might as well try to forget about it. For now.
“Oh, just a few goodies for tonight.”
My airy reply made his eyebrows lift in interest. A slow smile began at the corners of his mouth. “You know, this sounds promising.”
“Maybe.” I kept things light and teasing, though inside me the element that had perked up was far more fiery in nature.
“Hm. So are you going to show me what you’ve got? Or are you going to make me wait?” The blue of his eyes blazed a little hotter. “I’m not sure I’m going to be good at that.”
I smirked. I couldn’t help myself.
“Waiting,” he supplied quickly as clarification. “I’m not great at waiting.”
I giggled this time. I couldn’t help that, either.
“I assure you,” he leaned in closer, pinning me with his gaze, “I am very good at the rest of it.”
Gulp. Oh. Oh my. “Glad to hear it,” I whispered as the threads of our personal energies began to hum and buzz between us, searching for ways to thread together, to interlock.
“Is this a personal assessment?” I asked him. “Or one that has received acknowledgments from . . . others?”
“Rave reviews,” he promised as he smoothed his palm back and forth over the curve of my hip. “Maybe you’d like to add your perspective into the mix.”
“Hmm. Maaaaybe. Tonight, you mean?”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
“Hmm,” I repeated, tilting my head to consult a phantom To Do list in the sky. “I think I might be free . . .”
“Glad to hear it.” He closed the distance in one fell swoop, capt
uring my mouth and my attention in one pulse-starting instant.
This was a common occurrence for us, these past few weeks, and that was something I had to admit I was quite thrilled about. I hated to compare him to Tom—that seemed unfair, somehow, mostly to Tom—but sometimes I couldn’t help it. With Tom, there had always been promises of intimacy, hints of a depth of emotion, but despite a serious attraction both on his part and on mine, nothing ever seemed to ... happen. Honestly, more had happened with Marcus in three weeks than I had ever shared with Tom. There was something sad about that. A missed opportunity to share and explore something special with another person. Or maybe I was just sad that I hadn’t elicited a stronger response in him. For a while I really thought we could have had something together.
Sometimes it is hard to be wrong.
But Marcus . . . oh, yes. Kiss by kiss, touch by touch, look by look, moment by moment, he let me know how much he wanted me, and that was a very heady thing indeed. They say knowledge is power, but in a situation like this, did he hold the power? Or did I? And did that even matter when the end result promised so much fun and excitement along the way?
I think not.
And for once Minnie was playing along, not biting toes, not burrowing in my hair, not trying to worm her fuzzy face in between his and mine. It was just me gazing up at him, slipping my hands inside his shirt collar and holding him close, and it was him, taking me along with him for a truly wonderful ride. Never had a sofa seemed so blissfully comfortable before.
“Bedroom?” His voice and breath tickled in my ear, rumbling with possibilities.
I nodded. I didn’t trust my ability to speak at the moment.
Who needed rose petals and love-infused candles? Not this sometimes witchy woman.
He locked my arms around his neck and lifted me up in his arms, romance-hero style, with nary a grunt or groan to be heard. Bless the man. Nothing doused romantic fires quite as abruptly as the sudden rearing up of that ugly beast otherwise known as “Body Issues.”
Kissing while walking and carrying the full body weight of another person and wending one’s way between and around furniture is quite a mean feat. I am happy to report that Marcus handled all of the above most admirably. I might even say, with skill.
The bed swallowed me whole, comfy and deep. I sighed as I was pressed down into it by the delicious weight of his lean body. Kiss for kiss, touch for touch, things were progressing far better than I had even planned. It was still daylight out, the long, lazy hours before dusk would arrive, but it seemed even the stars were aligning in honor of the night, because I could swear I heard angelic trumpets sounding in my ears.
Or it could be the triumphant march of the 1812 Overture blaring at us from the top of the dresser, over in the corner.
“No, no, no, no, no!” I muttered to myself in frustration, squeezing my eyes tight to keep my mood from dissipating like so many steamy vapors. “I changed that ringtone. Ages ago. I swear I did.” Not to mention I had set my phone on vibrate.
I frowned. Actually, I pouted.
“It’s mine.” Marcus rolled off me with a sigh and a reluctant backward glance at my still supine body.
He grabbed the cell phone off the dresser, flipped it open, and lifted it to his mouth without looking at it. “Yeah.” To me, he mouthed with a dangerous glint in his eyes, Don’t. Move.
I wasn’t going anywhere. Trust me on that.
“Hey, Liss. What’s up? Maggie? Yeah, she’s here.” He listened for a moment. “Hold on.” He held the phone out to me. “Someone’s trying to get ahold of you. Sounds urgent.”
Chapter 3
It wasn’t too hard to come up with a list of likely suspects. Topping the chart? My loving, if overbearing mother, natch.
I could always be wrong, though.
“Oh, Maggie, I’m so glad I found you.” Liss’s urgent energy sizzled along the airwaves, sinking into my suddenly alert nerve endings. “Your mother has been burning up the phone lines at the store. She’s quite insistent on finding you. Now, dear, I know you’re, shall we say, busy”—I blushed at that—“but I don’t think she will be willing to give up the ghost easily.”
That was a given. This was my mother we were talking about. She could give any pit bull a run for its money for sheer stubbornness. “No, I’m sure she won’t. I’m sorry for the trouble, Liss.”
“Not to worry, ducks.”
“Did she say what was so urgent?”
“Nary a whisper. But I’m picking up on family, if that helps you to clarify.”
As my mom was all about family, just as much as she was about running each of their respective lives, it didn’t. It could be anything.
After signing off, I turned to Marcus, who had lain back on the bed to await me. His arms were crossed behind his head, a posture that pulled the sleeves of his T-shirt tight around the bulge of his biceps. Yum.
I handed his phone back to him. “My mother . . .” I hesitantly began to explain.
“Call,” he interjected without a moment’s pause, warding off my guilt. “I’ll wait.”
I wished I could just ignore my mother’s message, but it was a hopeless cause. There were a few things my mother was particularly good at, and extending missives was one of them. Mostly she was a master at keeping her family in check. Like a hen clucking after her chicks, she pecked us all into submission, one toe-scratched line at a time. The trick was to avoid confrontation with her entirely. Unfortunately I hadn’t quite figured out how to do that.
I padded out to the living room to find my bag. It was sitting on the floor just inside the front door—right where I’d left it. I reached for the straps, missing one as I lifted, only to be surprised by Minnie rolling out of its depths in a fuzzy, sleepy ball. Laughing, I scooped her onto my lap and stroked her with one hand while I dug in my bag for my phone with the other. Aha, gotcha. The little display screen showed that I had three new voice mail messages. Three. That was my mother’s limit. After that, all bets were off. Hence the harassment of my boss.
Sigh.
I dialed my mom’s cell number—she had finally given in to the relentless advancement of technology earlier in the summer once she figured out how a cell phone would make her stalking tendencies so much simpler to execute—and waited. Two whole rings . . . she was slipping.
“Margaret Mary-Catherine O’Neill! It is about time. Where have you been, and why have you been avoiding my calls?”
“Mom. Hi.”
“Don’t you ‘hi’ me, young lady. I have been at wit’s end trying to get a bead on you. Do you realize what I have gone through this afternoon?”
I didn’t, actually. Wasn’t that why I was calling? “Uh, sorry?” She didn’t get that sometimes I didn’t want to be found, and she wouldn’t understand it even if I did try to explain.
“You could try a little harder than that,” she complained. I could feel the disapproving little purse of her mouth growing tighter.
“I’m really, really, really, super sorry,” I lied. Because I wasn’t. I deserved a little quiet time with Marcus, without the threat of my overly intrusive family hovering about.
“Humph.” Not her most gracious of responses, but given the purpose for her call . . . “It’s Melanie,” she said, referring to my heavily pregnant sister. “It’s time.” Her voice was a touch breathless now that I stopped to listen a little more closely. “We’re all here at the hospital. Something is going on—they’ve shooed us out of the labor room. Only Greg is allowed in there with her. I think you should come in.”
“Well, is it serious?” My mind was whirling. “Is it Mel? Or is it the baby?”
“They haven’t said. Will you come?”
It was the soft quiver in her voice that time that got to me the most. Despite her sometimes overbearing nature, she was our mother, and she cared for us, deeply. I knew that. And Melanie was her favorite. “I’ll be there,” I told her quietly.
“Good. Oh, Margaret, be sure to stop for coffee for
everyone on the way in, won’t you? We’ll need four. Five counting you.”
And with that, her autocratic side returned at full strength like the force of nature it most closely resembled. My mom . . . she really did mean well. I was sure that would make a difference. Someday.
I set both my phone and the Minmeister back down before returning to the bedroom to break the news to Marcus. As I walked through the doorway, I found him just fastening the front of his jeans, and—ohhh my. A fresh white button-down hung open, exposing lean muscle and a tantalizing treasure trail of fine hair leading down to where his hands had just been working the placket of the stiff denim. I tried very hard not to torture myself overmuch by looking.
Yeah. Total fail.
“Where are we going?”
My gaze snapped upward guiltily. I stared at him, wondering how I was going to break it to him. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly ask you—”
“You didn’t ask. I offered. Where?”
I sighed. “It’s my sister. Melanie? She’s at the hospital. In labor. There might be . . . complications.”
“Well, let’s go.”
It was sweet of him to offer, and even sweeter that he wanted to dress to impress. But ... “I can’t ask you—” I started to say. “I mean, it’s an awful lot to ask of anyone. I mean, who knows how long I’ll be there. I mean—”
Marcus started in on buttoning his shirt, not missing a beat. “Your family doesn’t know about me, do they.”
It was a statement, not a question. There was no use denying it. I ducked my head. “No,” I admitted sheepishly.
“Ah.” With his shirt buttoned, he stepped safely into my circle of energy and put his hands on my arms, softly running his fingertips up and down. “You ashamed of me, Maggie?”
I brushed aside his question, scoffing. “Of course not.”
“No? Then why don’t you want me to meet your family?”
It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to meet them. It was that I didn’t want to subject him to them. Meeting a girlfriend’s family had to be a nerve-wracking proposition at the best of times. It was a big deal—a deal breaker, in some relationships. I was a little worried about whether my family would behave. It wasn’t their strong point.